Tourism quango spends £8,500 on perfume

VisitEngland, the tourism quango, has spent £8,500 on a perfume designed to capture
the essence of England - which includes the smell of the sea and lawnmower exhaust
fumes.

2:17PM BST 21 Aug 2009

The scent, called By George!, was designed to take those who smelt it on "a journey through an English seaside garden with salty sea air notes mingling with damp earth, garden mint, carrots and beetroots and freshly cut grass".

Created to promote the country during the Ashes, it includes "a symphony of the nation's most evocative smells", according to the organisation's promotional material.

Spectators at the second Ashes test at Lord's were invited by blonde promotions girls to try out the fragrance, which also contained "subtle exhaust fumes of the lawnmower".

Twenty bottles were given to media organisations, five were given away and five were kept.

Mark Wallace, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, dismissed it as "a complete waste of taxpayers' money".

But Amanda Smyth, of VisitEngland's Enjoy Every Minute, Enjoy England campaign, said: "We have explored the power of smell because of its heavy emotional weighting."